Uncertainty as to the time of her actual departure compelled her to relinquish forthwith her engagement with Mrs. May, who was on the point of going abroad for some months. But she was opportunely invited to take another position, for the time being, which she rightly affirmed that Providence had specially arranged for her. Her friend Mrs. Seymour required the help of a lady in her home, and was willing to receive Miss Thomas on terms which friendship dictated, and which friendship eagerly accepted. She was to regard herself as a visitor, and feel perfectly free to attend to her own affairs, and to depart whenever the call should come.
So Miss Thomas went from Hampstead to Highbury, where she passed the busy months of waiting in an atmosphere of sympathy and friendship. After some changes of arrangement it was ultimately fixed that she and Miss Comber should sail from Liverpool on March 5th. On Monday, March 3rd, a farewell meeting was held at Camden Road Church, and on behalf of the Sunday School, Mr. Parkinson presented Miss Thomas with a harmoniphon. She also received at the same meeting a medicine chest, the gift of Mr. Baynes, whose absence in consequence of illness was much deplored. There were some forty other presents privately given of which I have the list. It included items of practical utility. Among them, five pounds’ worth of spoons, forks, and table requisites, from “the Ladies’ Missionary Working Party”; and (equally useful) from other friends, four five-pound notes. Notable among the names of the donors are those of M. Gustave Masson, French Master at Harrow, Miss Thomas’s uncle by marriage with her mother’s sister; and the Rev. William Brock, minister of Heath Street, Hampstead, whose church Miss Thomas had attended during her stay in the district, and from whom she had received much of that discerning, sympathetic kindness which still endears him to all who come within its scope.
Miss Thomas spent the last fortnight with her friends, the Hartlands, at 34, Falkland Road, and on the morning of March 4th, she and Miss Comber left St. Pancras after an enthusiastic valediction from a large group of friends. They were accompanied to Liverpool by Mr. Percy Comber, Miss Comber’s younger brother, and Miss Alice Hartland. Mrs. Fletcher of Edge Lane, whose daughter was on the field at Cameroons, entertained them, with warmest hospitality, and in the evening a drawing-room meeting was held, at which the Rev. John Jenkyn Brown presided.
The next day shortly after noon they embarked in a tender, and proceeded to board the ss. Corisco, which lay in the stream. Many friends elected to say “goodbye” on board, and when the bell rang and the tender left, two of them, Mr. Percy Comber and Miss Alice Hartland, remained as stowaways, and secured the unchartered pleasure of a voyage with their dear ones down the river and across the bar. But their deferred farewells must needs be said at last. They also were put off in turn, and the two young missionary women passed out to sea.
CHAPTER III
VOYAGE TO THE CAMEROONS, AND A SURFEIT OF ADVENTURES. 1884
The trials of the missionary life commenced early for Miss Thomas. During the voyage to Madeira the weather was exceptionally bad, and she and Miss Comber endured the horrors of sea-sickness for a week. Happily their sorrows were mitigated by invincible good spirits. They “were very jolly all the time,” made jokes of their own miseries, and when the doctor enquired with traditional sympathy whether they yearned to be flung overboard, his obliging suggestion was repelled with scorn. The ship carried no stewardess, and at first they found it embarrassing to be waited upon by a man. But “any port in a storm,” and any help in the sickness which the storm produces! The steward was a nice kindly person, and they soon became used to his presence and grateful for his attendance. During the days of wild buffeting by wind and wave, the harbour of Madeira was looked forward to with strong desire, and it was a doleful hour in which the Captain expressed his fear that the badness of the weather would preclude his touching at the Island. That fear was discredited by the event; the weather moderated, and upon sighting land the sufferers were able to appear on deck.
They both found much comfort in the presence of a third lady, Mrs. Buckenham, who was going out to her husband, a Primitive Methodist missionary stationed at Fernando Po. The Captain’s marked kindness was an additional comfort, and indeed the source of very many. His cabin on deck had been annexed by certain gentlemen as a smoking saloon, but upon the appearance of the missionary ladies, the smokers suffered summary eviction, and the cabin was placed at their service. On the morning of March 12th they steamed round Madeira and made the harbour in perfect weather, which permitted them to take unchecked delight in the lovely scenery. The Captain saw them ashore, secured for them a spacious, private, detached apartment at the hotel where he himself put up, and in the afternoon Miss Thomas sat down to write a merry letter to her “dear Mother,” Mrs. Hartland.
As she writes her attention is confessedly distracted by the dazzling charms of the flower-garden she looks out upon, and the more sober, but more enthralling charms of the tea-table, which is being spread. Her week of sea-sickness is pleaded as an excuse for gloating over mere victuals, the validity of which plea the humane reader will immediately allow. Referring to the troubles passed, she writes gaily: “And we had many a laugh at our own expense. To see the boxes and chairs executing a jig in the middle of the room, and then to hear the fearful crashes of crockery in the pantry next our cabin, ourselves making frantic efforts to get from one side of the room to the other, and ending by being landed on the floor in an elegant sitting posture, or coming up with a spin against the door—all this was very diverting.”
As the Corisco was timed to sail at nine o’clock the next morning, Miss Thomas and her friends had little opportunity of making acquaintance with Funchal. Yet, in the limited time at their disposal they moved about briskly, with eyes wide open, and acquired many vivid impressions of the natural beauties of the place and the non-English social novelties which appealed to them in the shops and in the streets.